


God of War

by Watashi_wa_Okami



Series: Oneshots no one asked for [7]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But it's okay, Comfort/Angst, Happy Ending, Joui War, Post-War, Pre-War, Scary Gintoki, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27613031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watashi_wa_Okami/pseuds/Watashi_wa_Okami
Summary: If they hadn't decided in the midst of war that he was a demon, they would have realized that he was so much more than a Shiroyasha.
Relationships: Kagura & Sakata Gintoki & Shimura Shinpachi, Katsura Kotarou & Sakata Gintoki, Otose | Terada Ayano & Sakata Gintoki, Sakata Gintoki & Yoshida Shouyou
Series: Oneshots no one asked for [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516460
Comments: 4
Kudos: 137





	God of War

They all watch, both terrified and mesmerized by someone they respect so greatly. And yet this person, the laziest person in the world, has them all frozen in fear.

They watch, unsure how they could possibly describe the scene to anyone else, unsure just what is happening, unsure of how there’s just _so much blood and he doesn’t bat an eye_. The Vice Commander sometimes acts in the same manner, but never so ferociously.

Then _it_ happens.

As Shinpachi and Kagura scream for their boss and the other fighters slowly get out of their daze to defend themselves, two people charge Gintoki. He hardly bats an eye.

He snaps an arm out like a viper and grabs one by the face with (what _should_ be) his dominant hand. He pulls the person forward and in a movement too swift for anyone but Gintoki to comprehend, he makes the others sword pierce through both the man’s head and Gintoki’s own hand.

It slips through and he doesn’t even wince, his dead-fish gaze doesn’t shift.

The sword wielder freezes in palpable fear while Gintoki just slices his throat. As the man falls in a slow, painful death, his sword unsteadily comes out of Gintoki’s hand and the two bodies fall. In one swift movement, Gintoki fully takes his hand back and tests its strength before picking up another broken sword. He doesn’t even try to wipe the blood from his face.

“Oi, you should be careful when handling sharp objects.” The bland tone and the dead face don’t match his words. Then in a moment, he’s just a torrent of blood and metal and flying bodies as he plows through the enemy forces. After a moment of hesitation, the Shinsengumi follow after, although they aren’t sure if they’re actually needed. Very few enemies still have a fighting spirit. Not when they see what they’re fighting against.

Later, when they are interrogated by the officers, the amanto tremble in fear as they relay how the _thing_ that had passed them was a shinigami. They felt that emotionless intent to kill them as though the claws of a demon were on their throat. His eyes had no mercy for them, they know that’s not the reason they lived.

Once the battle - if it can still be called that - concludes, Gintoki can be seen in the center, surrounded by bodies and standing on a blood soaked floor. Kagura and Shinpachi watch him for a moment, both wary of their boss and they decide to help the Shinsengumi instead.

Gintoki joins them with a sigh as he runs a hand through stained hair. He had abandoned the swords and after a look at his broken bokuto, he leaves that too.

“Ah, what a pain.” He drawls while carefully scanning the duo for injuries, finding none his eyes soften. Only slightly, but after what they had seen, it’s a drastic difference. “Oi, Gorilla, I’m billing you for a new bokuto.”

“And for my sukonbu!”

“What a pig.” Okita comes from nowhere and Kagura immediately launches at him.

“Thanks for your help, Yorozuya.” Kondo admits with a nod but it takes him a moment to meet Gintoki’s eye. Because his face is covered in blood dripping to surround both eyes. And he doesn’t care that it’s drying into a murky brown on his skin. Even the oni ni fukucho has cleaned the blood off himself and ordered the same of the entire Shinsengumi.

“Man what a mess.” He comments as he looks back on the trail of blood he left. He then lazily attempts to look at the bottom of his boots before scraping them on the pavement. “Ah, I could go for a parfait. Kagura, Shinpachi, let’s go.”

“Okay, Gin-chan!” Kagura shouts and Shinpachi scrambles to catch up with the leaving trio, his shouts being covered up by Sadaharu’s yips.

“Gin-san, I think we should…”

“Oi, oI!” Hijikata screams after the wild group but they’re long gone. “Kondo-san.”

“I know.” They all look towards the remnants to bodies, torn apart by both hands and blade. Anyone that was unfortunate enough to look Gintoki in the eye only felt pain before a merciless death. Only seasoned members of the Shinsengumi are able to handle the gore, but even at that point they still manage to stumble across things they had never dealt with before. A skull entirely crushed - how had Gintoki done that? - an eyeless face, someone with an arm torn off - not cut off, _torn_ off. There were no survivors of Gintoki’s wrath.

“Didn’t think Danna had this in him.” Okita states offhandedly while attending to new wounds.

“Sometimes that man… oi! Anyone slacking, it’s _seppuku_ \- Yamazaki I see you!”

“We forget we don’t know who he is.” Kondo then turns to his men and sends most off with the prisoners. Better they get home and rest.

“That lazy arrogant bastard, he’s played us all for fools, hasn’t he?” The vice chief growls as he stomps out a cigarette before lighting another one.

At the Yorozuya, Gintoki attends to his charges minor wounds before taking a bath and taking care of his own. He sends them to the Shimura House where he knows they’ll be better taken care of. They try to get him to go with them but he adamantly refuses, something about that Gorilla woman potentially killing him.

The Incident gets swept under the rug. Although behind closed doors, many of the Shinsengumi can’t help but recount any interaction they had with Gintoki, trying to form some connection between the hypoglycemic and the demon. The Yorozuya falls back into normal the next day, lazing about and waiting for a job.

Long before the Incident, Hijikata had Yamazaki do a report on Gintoki. There was so little to find. At the time, it had annoyed Hijikata but he came to ignore it and took Gintoki at face value. He thought Gintoki was the same as himself: thorny and fighting to protect. But that battle… he saw nothing in Gintoki’s eyes. His face was twisted for a battle cry - guttural and inhumane - but there was no familiar gleam in those crimson orbs. It was not Gintoki-like at all.

Where had Gintoki’s path diverged from that of his own? How were they so similar yet so different? No matter how hard he tries, Hijikata can’t get his mind off Gintoki and the Incident.

It seems everyone is in the same boat and the gossip in the Shinsengumi spreads like wildfire.

Within a week, everyone’s talking about how demonic Gintoki had acted. Some people approach him about it, others try to avoid him, but most people in Kabuki-cho hardly question it.

After all, they have seen more sides of Gintoki than anyone wants to see. And that includes that sadistically demonic side when he fights to protect them all. So why would they mind?

However, as the talk spreads, Gintoki hears about it pretty quickly. At first, he’s stuck when someone approaches him at a bar and questions why he kills people unlike some of the better _Shonen_ protagonists ( _hey!_ ) And that incident just keeps repeating each bar.

When he gets _thanked_ he heads straight for Snake Otose. He’s already drunk and tripping over his steps, but that doesn’t mean his ears are clogged.

“Are you serious? Gintoki-Gintoki? But-”

“We should be careful-”

“He would never turn on us… right?”

He’s tired and this really is the perfect cherry on top for all this. He knew this would happen, it just took longer than he thought and by the time he reaches Snack Otose, he just wants a drink. The place is mostly empty except for a few stragglers, but Gintoki doesn’t think it’s that late. He’s not yet black-out so the night’s still young.

He hobbles to the counter and sits beside the blushing old man. Otose eyes the permed man for a moment before placing a cup of cheap booze in front of him. The man beside Gintoki tips his drink back, but when he looks through the tie on his head and sees the somber permed man, his drink shoots from his nose and onto the counter.

Otose jumps and Catherine curses at the mess. The man fumbles with the cup before dropping it on the counter. It takes Gintoki a moment to realize how fearful the man is, not taking his eyes off Gintoki but refusing to make contact, and he fumbles off the chair in a desperate need to get away. The male stumbles into a table and his hazy eyes just make out the silver form.

“Hitsubashi, are you okay?” Otose asks as she comes around the counter. The male offers her a numb nod but Otose is a smart woman. “Too much to drink?” She berates him before getting him an escort home in Tama.

By the time Otose turns back to the counter, there’s a lonesome full glass waiting for her.

It takes hardly a day for the people familiar with Gintoki to notice something’s off. The normal citizens haven’t decided how they feel about the intense rumors: they either tolerate him or they don’t, so simple and yet such a difficult task for many.

The kids are immediately on it, dragging him out to places with less people and obnoxiously showing him their love and support in the ways only they can. Otose offers him a place to drink cheap that only people who like Gintoki are willing to go to. It becomes a sort of sanctuary from all the rumors and tensions, as Snack Otose is their territory and they’ve already fought for it once. And _won_.

That… doesn’t really help their case. But they don’t care about those people, so what does it matter?

Shinpachi, while he has grown to care for Gintoki, stares at the samurai’s back when he isn’t looking. He’s no warrior-race with a blood thirsty brother, and he can’t say he wasn’t terrified.

_Gintoki was covered in blood - not his. It was a new concept for Shinpachi. Typically after a battle, Gintoki is covered in wounds with a smile on his face, saying something along the lines of ‘we won’ with the gleam in his eye._

_Yet this time was different._

_Shinpachi froze when Gintoki picked up that metal sword. Not because that was entirely new - they saw him in the Benizakura Arc as he fought that organic weapon. But this was different. His eyes were empty of all but the promise of death._

_And he delivered._

_Without a care for anything, he delivered that promise in clean strokes. There was no hesitation. There was no bushido._

_It wasn’t samurai-like at all. And as those arcs of blood flew from bodies and his sword, Shinpachi could only watch with weak knees and a fake smile._

_“Gin-san?” The words fell from trembling lips, too soft for Gintoki to hear but Shinpachi wishes he had. He wanted that sword to falter for even a second, but it never did._

_Shinpachi looked beside him to Kagura._

_She was much louder than him, shouting ‘Gin-chan, Gin-chan!’ to no avail. Her blue eyes were wide and their sheen was almost invisible._

_She couldn’t help but see her brother, and yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away._

_While the chaos continued around them, they watched Gintoki tear through their enemies - literally, with bare hands grabbing heads and arms, throwing them about and tearing through anyone that got in his way._

They both know he’s strong - too strong for a human at times. But in all their everyday tomfoolery, they forget that. They forget that he’s a man that can tear through a cannon with a wooden sword, they forget that he can bend metal with his bare hands. They forget that he has, time and time again, committed feats that far outclass that of a human’s capabilities.

They forget that he is the most known figure of the Joui War and that means something.

At the end, when Gintoki was standing ankle-deep in bodies and blood, he blinked back into himself and stuck a bloody finger up his nose, yapping about something dumb and immature.

It sent a chill down their spines, seeing him act so casually and like himself when he was the cause of all those corpses. Corpses he stepped on as he left them, on faces and arms, the mass was nothing to him and he made that very clear.

But when he looked at them, his eyes brightened. And they had questions and they didn’t want that blood to touch them, so Gintoki heeded their silent commands. He didn’t reach for them and they watched as he looked for half a second at the blood on his hands. Long enough to acknowledge it, but short enough for them to know that it means nothing to him.

So they hunt down Katsura, the one person they’re willing to ask any questions.

They find the samurai at the okama bar. The second Zurako sees them, she escorts them to a table. They talk in hushed tones and Shinpachi won’t stop looking over his shoulder.

“I won’t tell you to forget what you saw,” Katsura finally says with a light sigh.

“But it’s still Gin-chan, right?” Kagura adds and they both look to her. Because that’s his only defense, isn’t it. That he’s still just Gin-san.

“Yeah, he’s still the same person.”

For all they try to stay quiet, Madame Saigo still overhears the conversation and she sees the look in those kid’s eyes. A look that tells of the traumas they had witnessed, and at the hands of their favorite samurai, no less.

Katsura almost tells them that Gintoki’s always been like this, but he can’t imagine that would solve any of their problems. It would just guarantee more questions and more looks that Gintoki doesn’t have the strength to deal with. Not from those kids, Gintoki couldn’t handle that.

Both Saigo and Katsura are aware that Gintoki has noticed the kids being off, he always does. And it would make sense, him being distant with them. They wouldn’t hunt Katsura down at the okama club if that weren’t the case.

So Madame Saigo decides to take matters into her own hands.

“Oi, oi, I know we’re Yorozuya but don’t call on me every time one of your gorillas gets sick!” Gintoki attempts to complain but soon he’s eating the ground with Madame Saigo above him, a fist raised as if daring the man to speak again.

“Our ladies have been dropping like flies, and our clients miss Paako. So go get your makeup on!” And Gintoki can’t fight against the brute strength as Saigo grabs his ankle and drags him through the street.

“Hel… help me.”

“Bye bye!” Kagura calls after Gintoki before trotting away with Sadaharu. Shinpachi watches the remnants of their boss in the distance before heading back home. Oddly enough, they trust her to get Gintoki out of this funk.

Gintoki soon finds himself dancing beside Katsura once again, but after working at that place for so long they are no longer (as) critiqued by their peers.

“Zura, why are you here?”

“It’s not Zura, it’s Zurako!” They then land on a beat where they can pose and allow for applause. “For my cause, we need more money. And Madame Saigo is always willing to hire us.” They get up to fall back into routine and Katsura flicks his eye to Gintoki. “I heard about what happened.”

“So has everyone else, Zura. You’re so slow.”

“It’s not Zura, it’s Zurako.” He hisses back but falls silent for some time. Again, they strike another beat and another round of applause reaches their ears. “You don’t think -”

“Zura, there’s nothing to worry about. If anything -” they turn “this can be helpful.” Katsura looks at Gintoki’s side profile before sighing and falling silent.

Not long after that, it’s brought up again. Although, he’s surprised Katsura had really let the topic go. Maybe something has finally gotten through that thick skull.

“Paako, Madame Saigo wants to speak with you!”

“Heard you the first time, Chinny.”

“Ch - _Chinny!_ ”

“It’s not Chinny,” Katsura interjects, “it’s Jawwy.”

“ _It’s neither!_ ” Gintoki leaves the crying man and heads to where Saigo must be. She’s waiting at a table by herself, a bottle of sake set out with two cups.

Although for the two of them, she should have two bottles at _least_.

“What’s the occasion?” Gintoki sits across from Saigo and nods as she pours a drink.

“It took me a while, but I remember you.”

“Did Kintoki come back or something? That was forever ago.” Gintoki knows that isn’t what Madame Saigo meant, but he still pokes the bear and they can laugh.

“You were the Corpse Eating Demon, weren’t you?” A silence befalls the table. Gintoki doesn’t answer and opts to refill his cup, downs it, and refills it again.

“Haven’t heard that name in a long time.” His tone is bland and Saigo can’t see his eyes, his emotions masked perfectly.

She had always wondered what sort of life would create that permanent mask. Now it makes too much sense.

“I thought so,” Madame Saigo says and watches Gintoki carefully refill their cups. “I made sure my men didn’t go after you. You didn’t seem like much of a demon to me.” For the life of him, Gintoki can’t remember ever seeing Saigo. But then again, back then he lived in a colorless world where people were just things he had to deal with. “My men believed you actually ate them.” Saigo eyes the samurai across from him. He was genuinely curious about the man. Although he had been aware of a few minor details concerning the man, he can’t help but hear what goes on in Kabuki Chou. But he hadn’t pieced together the young demon with the lazy samurai. Not until a passing Shinsengumi whispered to another, admittedly in a moment of fear, about how they had feared Gintoki would tear them all apart.

A claim that wouldn’t come true (unless they touched his kids.)

“Ew, I’d rather starve.” Gintoki says blandly as he pours yet another cup, his cheeks flushed but he’s not drunk enough, not yet, not for him and not for this conversation.

He’s surprised he hasn’t made some excuse and run off, but it isn’t so bad, sitting here and drinking for free.

Saigo pauses for a moment as she really processes Gintoki’s words. She can read between the lines. Being who she is and what she’s gone through, she’s heard her fair share of stories and secrets.

She doesn’t ask about how starved Gintoki let himself get to try eating a corpse - she’s sure that happened, if the gleam in those red eyes - or lack thereof - is anything to go by. She doesn’t ask how often he had been brought to the brink of questioning cannibalism or how often he thought he’d die because he couldn’t do it.

But Madame Saigo doesn’t blame him.

“Well, I’m glad you made it. We all are,” Madame Saigo says as she refills Gintoki’s cup. He’s slow in responding but slowly he turns his head up. Not enough to fully see his face. That shaggy fringe of his gets annoying. “You went from a child of war to a God of it, didn’t you!” Gintoki cracks his own smirk at the fact he had pondered over many times before.

From a son of war to the God of it, huh?

It doesn’t get rid of the metallic taste of blood in his mouth or the weight on his back. But it helps.

When he goes back home, the slight shift is all they need to tear him from that funk. They shower him in all sorts of obnoxious energies that soon he’s berating and laughing and drinking his ass off.

He doesn’t completely get over the looks, but everyone eventually comes to learn that Gintoki really is just _Gintoki_ , and that’s always meant one thing. They could take it or leave it and he sure as hell was not going to change. So might as well like the guy who’s job it is to save the world. After all, he’s the main character.


End file.
